A food blog will rarely give a full picture of a blogger’s eating habits, not least because of repetition of favourite recipes, which are cooked often but only blogged once, naturally.

But the other reason is that we seldom blog takeaways. I’m sure a few bloggers do, now and then. And I imagine there are even a few blogs dedicated to nothing but takeaways. But most of us tend to ignore, in our writing, the nights in with a delivered pizza, Indian or Chinese.

Pete and I have always enjoyed takeaways, no doubt too many of them when we were younger, though we eat fewer of them these days. Pizza, Indian, Chinese… yes and also Thai, Turkish / kebabs and fish’n’chips.

Where once we used to call to place an order, and swear darkly when we realised we’d lost the leaflet (with both menu and phone number) of the place we’d fancied on a particular evening, these days we go online. Phone orders were always my job but when the digital revolution happened, Pete took over.

He’s been using Just Eat to place our orders for several months now, and has found it very convenient. After entering your postcode, the site provides a list of all the restaurants it has on its books which make deliveries to your address. You can easily filter these by cuisine and sort them by which are closest to you or which have the highest user ratings.

The site takes into account which are open at the time you access the site, and lists those first. You can choose to also view those that are closed, with many allowing you to pre-order for when they do open.

Click on a restaurant to view the full menu and use the straightforward “+” buttons to build your order. It’s easy enough to cancel something if you make an error or change your mind.

Many restaurants also list special offers, such as free items based on the value of your order, though read carefully as some require you to make mention of these in the comments field to claim them.

Ordering online means you can pay with a card, which makes life easier if you don’t have the cash to hand.

There are weaknesses – when I usually order from a favourite Indian place, I ask them to make me an egg curry; it’s not on the menu but they are always happy to make it for me. There’s (quite fairly) no mechanism to do this online, as there’s no way to establish a price and include it in the payment. And some restaurants have forgotten to include their drinks offerings online so if you fancy the beer or cola you usually add to your order, you’re stuck! Both fairly minor issues.

Payment is straightforward, but do make sure you wait until the order is confirmed. As the Just Eat system needs to send for and receive confirmation from the restaurant, this does take a little more time than we’re used to in today’s world of click and confirm a second later.

The subjectof the confirmation email put a smile on my face by thanking me for not cooking!

One reason takeaway reviews don’t much feature on blogs is that they’re definitely not photogenic, as you can see.

However, this takeaway from local Xian restaurant was excellent. Xian is the priciest of the Chinese takeaways in our area, by some margin, but the food is good and worth the extra.

Given the sheer cost of printing and delivering regularly updated takeaway leaflets through the doors of all their catchment neighbourhoods, I’m guessing that local restaurants are very glad of increased custom via sites such as this. From our point of view, we’ve found it more convenient too.

COMPETITION

Just Eat have offered one lucky Kavey Eats reader a £50 credit voucher to use on their site, so you can enjoy a great local takeaway on them!

Their coverage across the UK is excellent. Type your postcode in to see if they list any restaurants in your local area.

HOW TO ENTER

Like the Kavey Eats Facebook and leave a (separate) comment on this blog post with your Facebook user name.

Entry 3 – TwitterFollow @Kavey on Twitter. Existing followers are, of course, welcome to enter!
Then tweet the (exact) sentence below.I’d love to win £50 to use on @JustEatUK from Kavey Eats!http://goo.gl/TusfM #KaveyEatsJustEat(Please do not add my twitter handle into the tweet; I track entries using the hashtag. And you don’t need to leave a blog comment about your tweet either, thanks!)

RULES & DETAILS

The deadline for entries is midnight GMT Friday 26th July 2013.

The winners will be selected from all valid entries using a random number generator.

I really like vietnamese Pho. I think it’s because it has all the nice things of takeaway (it’s made for you and it’s something that’s never quite the same if you make it yourself) but none of the unhealthyness guilt.

My favourite has to be Indian. Here in Leicester there are so many to choose from. A particular favourite restaurant to get take-aways from is Bobby’s on the Golden Mile — authentic Gujarati vegetarian fare at its finest, at reasonable prices, with plenty of sweets and savouries to get boxed up and take home as well.

I love our local Turkish takeaway, they do brilliant shish kebabs, but their true work of art are their pizzas – believe or not but they are much better than any Italian pizza I’ve ever tasted. They are registered with Just Eat so this prize would come in very handy!

I love to use our local curry take away, I’ve never even notice the name just the smell because the curries smell delicious. It’s so simple, vegetable, chicken or lamb, 3 types of rice and selection of side vegetables, lovely samosas, nans made to order. A choice of large/small/hot or extra hot and the prices are very reasonable.

There is an excellent Lebanese takeaway a couple of miles from me, so if I’m ordering online I often pick them. I also love pizza and Indian takeaways, but probably wouldn’t order them online as there are brilliant places for both of those on my street, so I can easily call in on the way home.

My favourite take away is chinese. I love it because we always get this when we visit my Dad. So there’s me, my boyfriend and my Dad and we all like different things. Because of this, we always over order… which is great because we always take away the left overs! LOVE IT!

I love my local Chinese takeaway – they do great udon noodle dishes that aren’t swimming in oil, and the chef/owner makes sure all the ingredients do not contain artificial colours or flavours. Tastes fab too!

my favourite takeaway has to be a chinese near me i always get salt n pepper chicken wings which are so scrummy i could eat them everyday lol and my favourite sweet and sour chicken with egg fried rice mmmm 🙂 making myself hungry writing this lol sooo free tkeway would be amazing 🙂

We love Chinese takeaways but they are a rare treat in our house! We used to get away with the kids sharing a meal but as their getting bigger it now costs us a fortune! This voucher would be a yummy treat

my Fav Takeaway food has to be pizza 🙂 I love our Friday family nights, where my 2 girls,little boy, and fiance get the picnic blankets out make a little camp on the floor, eat pizzas with lots of dips and potato wedges, and watch a family movie 🙂 PERFECT XX

[…] Just Eat, the online takeaway ordering service I reviewed a few months ago, have asked me to share their Tried & Tasted 2014 Awards with you. They are calling for votes to decide the best Just Eat Chinese, Italian, Turkish (and so on) in each region of London. They have created shortlists based on customer feedback, and now it’s up to Londoners to vote for their favourites. […]